Hearthstone's Curse Of Naxxramas expansion is out Tuesday

Good news, friends. Curse of Naxxramas, the single-player expansion for Blizzard's debilitatingly addictive card battler Hearthstone, will be released on 22 July. Which, for the calendar shy among you, is next Tuesday. As previously revealed, the content—which sees players taking on a string of bespoke boss encounters based on the World of Warcraft raid—is split into five wings, which will be unlocked one by one over the course of five weeks.

The first wing to swing open its doors is the Arachnid Quarter, entry to which will be free for the launch period (around a month). Access to subsequent wings will cost $6.99/£4.99 or 700 in-game gold, but the most effective way to get all the content is probably to buy the five-wing bundle for $24.99/£17.49. Full pricing details can be found here .

It looks like good value to me. Partly because, judging by the leaked info (spoilers, obviously), the boss battles sound really inventive and fun. More significantly, though, your reward for clearing each wing, and a series class-based challenges which use pre-built decks, will be a total of 30 new cards. And frankly, the card pool is in serious need of a refresh if the overall metagame for constructed play (oh hai, Zoolock) is going to avoid getting totally stale.

Our resident Legendary player Vincent Sarius recently analysed the nine class-specific cards which will be dispensed as Naxxramas rewards here . He'll be back next week with tips for how to beat the bosses, but in the meantime check out these furtive images http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/24/leaked-images-show-hearthstones-curse-of-naxxramas-content/ showing Naxxramas in action. Personally, I'm praying Blizzard add some extra deck slots in there so I can stop relying on a Google doc to track my endless Druid variants. Typical note: “abject failure.” If you want to read more about my Ladder struggle, and how I've been dealing with the yips, check this out. Right, now who wants to help me test my Voidcaller deck when I get the card?

As an inveterate Hearthstone addict, Tim spends most of his time trying to explain why all Priest players are degenerates. The rest of his day is spent playing Destiny 2. Seriously, he's on it right now.